Of bears and men

 So obviously men are problem. So much so, that 99.9% women who responded to the question rather have a chance encounter with a bear in a forest than with an unknown man. (Maybe they misunderstood and like hairy, thick, homosexual men?)

Which goes to show two things, really. People, who responded, are stupid. I mean really, fucking stupid. The education system completely failed. Second: it is incredible how polarized our world has become, where facts matter not, feelings trump everything. And if you are a man, and have an opinion, obviously you are dismissing women and their experiences, and should just shut up. Obviously. (Even though it kinda is about you, too. And really, real world evidence and "muh experience" are kind of different things.)

So the first thing.

Bear attacks are rare. True. But why are they rare you may ask. Well, let's see. Bears are rare, so encounters are rare, despite of people hiking and generally living where bears live. About 1% of chance encounters end up in an attack; which is not a lot, admittedly. (There is no actual statistics; I found a couple of estimates and used the lowest one.) But then again: how many men does a woman encounter on a regular basis and how many bears? If you really think you are safer with a bear than with a random man, even just looking at the numbers, you are -as we established already- fucking stupid. Not many people meet a 100 bears in their lifetime, so the chances of getting attacked by one is astronomically low. But if you regularly met hundreds of bears... well, the situation would change. Drastically. Women meet hundreds and thousands of men regularly, and if 1% of those meetings end up in an attack, well, we have an ongoing bloodbath; Khrone would be proud. Let me put this this way: cows kill hundreds of people every year, whereas lions hardly any. Does it mean cows are more dangerous than lions? Seriously? Well, do try to keep the same number of lions as we have cows, and we would see. Statistics without understanding the context means exactly jackshit.

So that's one issue out of the way.

The other thing is we ignored the fact that most violent acts are committed by a fraction of the population. Mostly men, yes, but women are violent, too, which is left out of the discussion interestingly. Also: men are significantly more likely to be victims of random violence than women. The level of fear and the actual threat may not be in balance here, but then again, it never usually is, considering how much people fear serial killers vs how much they fear cigarettes or ultraprocessed food. We are morons when it comes to things we fear. (Further example: fear of commercial flights vs fear of automobiles.) The issue here is more complex than these idiots would like to believe.

Another also important forgotten issue: if we focus on sexual attacks only, well, those are mostly committed by people close to the victim, so again, no cigar there. A random man will be a safer choice than your uncle, for example, just going by the statistics alone. I am sure your uncle is a nice person who would not rape anyone, but statistically he is more likely to rape you than that dude on the tram. Another interesting sidenote: many women would prefer to be dismembered by a bear than to be raped? Really? That is just... wow. I mean you can't be more stupid that this; which just shows how sheltered and privileged these people are. I guess there is nothing for me but to wish them their bear encounter they crave so much. After all, it is all fun and games until the grizzly starts eating you while you are still alive.

And then the second point I want to make.

The amount of glee, bitterness, outright hatred that stems from this victim menality s incredible. Women do seem to have adopted this hostile attitude against one half of humanity as not just something valid, but something to be embraced. Meanwhile, supposedly, they not all are angry lesbians (who, by the way, have the highest incidence of domestic violence) and have day-to-day encounters with their fathers, husbands, sons. I guess they do not count?  And let's not forget. These women are living the cosy, safe, sheltered life of the Western world, not the oppressive Patriarcy of Saudi Arabia, for example. Anyone spouting this idiocy, and stirring up hatred deserves her 1% chance meeting a bear. Young men already face challenges they get absolutely no support for, so this is not helping. The largest cause of death in men under 40 is suicide. They are more dangerous to themselves than to anyone, especially to those angry and misshapen women who dwell in their imaginary victimhood.

This idiocy perfectly shows the problem with victim mentality. Since you are the victim, you are justified to have absolutely no empathy -and outright hostility- towards the evil oppressors, and you are justified in your hatred. It also helps to foster an incredible level of narcisism. You can see this in all the comment sections whenever men's issues come up - women are so incredibly hostile, ready to belittle, to dismiss, it is incredible. You'd wonder how people who are claiming that empathy is important in uderstanding the struggle of others can so easily dismiss others' struggles.  That is until you realize that strong in-group empathy leads to the lack of it against anyone who is in the out-group. This is exactly how racists operate by the way.

And as a closing, I will present you an alternative version of this tik-tok question, which is much more supported by statistics than the fucking bear is. (Mind you this is for demonstrating the idiocy; I do not actually pushing for this.)

Would you be more willing to be alone in a forest with a white man or a black man? As we know, in the US, blacks are overwhelmingly responsible for violent crime, so this is a valid question, no? And if you do not think it is -based on some weird moral qualms about racism being bad and all-, why the fuck do you think the original question is acceptable, which is not even supported by statistics? Sexism is fine when it comes to men?

When negative stereotypes are OK

 This has really been bothering me for a while. You keep reading how stereotypes are bad (even good ones), now D&D has done the right thing (depending on your point of view) and removed negative race ability score modifiers  (whatever they might be -but what is important to be more inclusive and not to hurt our Orc and  goblin player's feelings)…

But every time you read an article about abuse -physical or mental- it is almost guaranteed the photos will show a female victim and a male abuser.

Just do a search:

This article has links to further articles which all show female victims, and if shown, male perpetrators. IKEA? But of course!

The Guardian is  obviously following this trend -how could they not? Psychology Today?  Of course Always… 

Foundations? Obviously

There was one exception I found in this non-representative search. One.

This article does not even try… it flat out uses the male pronoun.

Why is this a problem? Well, apart from the usual "stereotyping hurts, it is bad, you should not do it" any time it comes up with anyone who is not white and male (but any time you complain when it is about white males, you get the "you are such a snowflake" comments), it does help pushing a false narrative of male perpetrators and female victims. (Even when it is about male victims, it is somehow the Patriarchy's fault...) This has real-world consequences on how society relates to male victims (or men accused of being perpetrators) - as it was  many times discussed even on these pages. 

But apparently this does not really ring the alarm bells the same way as stereotyping Orcs or Sand People does. 

So here's an amazing analysis from Reddit about the issues concerning tribalism, the Left and Right.

I'm just gonna post it in full. (It's a tendency of all the "big" media outlets to steal shit from Reddit; at least I'm properly crediting it.)

All I'm saying is if someone does something bad in a protest, that doesn't make the protest bad.

I think you've chosen the wrong argument here. I think what you should say is that the reason for the protest might not be wrong just because it turns violent, as in the position or argument that the protestors are basing their protest on can stand regardless of the protest actions. That could be true.

However, a protest is what happens at it. A protest that turns violent is, by definition, a bad protest. There is a difference behind the position of the protestors and the behaviour of the protestors. Bad behaviour doesn't mean a bad position, true, but the protest itself is the behaviour, not the position. You can hold the position with or without protesting. The behaviour is the protest and the protest is the behaviour.

Being "in the right" or "in the wrong" is also multifaceted. If I tell you that 2+2=5 and you say, no, it's 4, and I disagree, so you punch me in the face, then you are factually correct in your information but morally wrong in your actions on how to convey that information.

Beyond that academic discussion, there is a deeper issue though. Resorting to violence itself tends to come from a few main sources. People who resort to violence generally often can't win the argument on merits and get frustrated, so turn to violence because they truly believe something even if they can't demonstrate it to be true or articulate it. For example, the claims that Milo is a white supremacists, racist, sexist/misogynist, Islamophobic, or otherwise are baseless because there's both no evidence of any of that and there's plenty of evidence he isn't. But, he tends to vehemently criticize the "social justice" left, so they hate him and either tend to shout him down or turn to violence, since they can't win by debating on facts and reasoning. (I say this as somebody who disagrees with much of what Milo has to say in academic terms, but his critics are more wrong than he is.)

Another related reason people turn to violence is they've fallen prey to ingroup/outgroup tribalism, which is perhaps best modeled by Realistic Conflict Theory and best demonstrated in the Robbers Cave Experiment (RCE).

Essentially you can create hatred, vitriol, and violence between groups is two easy steps. Step 1 is to divide people into groups. That can be random as in the RCE, arbitrary such as the eye colour in Jane Elliott's classroom experiment, or essentially any differentiator: political leanings, favorite sports team, religion, nationality, accent, height, PC vs Mac, Android vs iOS, Coke vs Pepsi.

Step 2 is to set the groups in conflict, either via a competition (rewards, punishment, social status, attention, special privileges, etc.) or sparked by group-based insults ("fascist right", "communist left", "criminal blacks", "privileged whites", "terrorist Muslims", etc.).

That's it. Then buy some popcorn and watch it degrade into violence. In the RCE there were fistfights, sabotage, burning of other teams flag, and so on. In Jane Elliott's class, the different groups oppressed each other given the chance.

In addition to the violence and hatred, the groups tend to create in-group social norms arbitrarily and out-group narratives, typically with "us" being saints and righteous and "them" being evil. Both sides tend to rationalize, including rationalizing violence because "they" are evil, and the ends justify the means. Facts be damned.

In the U.S., this tribalist behaviour is clearly demonstrable in the massively partisan division. On top of that, you have the fringe voices becoming the justifications. On the fringe right you have the white supremacists who statistically represent a small rounding error of Trump supporters yet these are who the political left use to smear Trump supporters. On the fringe left you have the "social justice" activists and anarchists who represent only a fraction of the anti-Trump crowd (and/or Clinton supporters), yet this is who the political right use to smear anti-Trump supporters. (Milo is one of them too, who equate SJWs with liberals or anyone left of center, which is where he is very wrong of course.)

It also happens that these are the two groups that instigate Steps 1 and 2 of Realistic Conflict Theory. The fringe bigots on the right group people by traits: skin colour/race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and so on. They put them in a competition in a hierarchy with the dominant/majority at the top and the marginalized minorities at the bottom, and suggest everybody must conform to the interests of people at the higher end of the hierarchy.

The social justice left also group people by traits: skin colour/race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and so on. They put them in a competition in a hierarchy with the marginalized minorities at the top and the dominant/majority at the bottom (known as the progressive stack), and suggest everybody must conform to the interests of people at the higher end of the hierarchy. And, they refer to groups having "voices" and treat people based on their grouping. It tends to derive from a form of Marxism of flipping the powers as applied to minority status instead of by peasants vs industrialists.

Voila, both of these fringe groups both contribute to creating hatred between groups. Both contribute to each others existence and power, and both pull the partisan politics to more extremes. And both are very, very wrong. Both commit the fallacy of division, assuming things that apply to the groups as a whole apply to individuals described by those groupings, and both commit the base rate fallacy. The fringe right confuse the fact that "most terrorists are Muslim" (true) with "most Muslims are terrorists" (not true). The fringe left confuse "most privileged people tend to be whites/males" (true) with "most whites/males tend to be privileged" (not true).

The correct answer is for both fringes to stop treating people as being part of a group defined by traits, and instead treat people as individuals who have traits. Treat them by the content of the character (merit), and not the color of their skin (race). This is, in fact, what is written into human rights codes, that all individuals are equal to other individuals and have the right not to be judged based on such traits, except where the trait is the merit of interest itself. It is then violations of that rule that are bigotry, and that applies equally to all people of all races, sexes, gender identities, nationalities, ethnicities, and so on. It's the violation of the principle that matters, not the particular race or group that matters.

So what does this have to do with violence and protests? Protests often turn violent when the protesters are themselves subject to tribalist tendencies; the "us vs them" mentality. This is why right-wing racists turn violent against racial groups and fringe left-wing groups, and why left-wing Marxists tend to turn violent against right-wing groups. It's also why liberals, libertarians, and moderate conservatives don't tend to turn violent, because they are based on common rules for all and equal freedom and equal rights for all, not group against group fighting for power.

So, in that context, a protest turning violent is an indicator that the protestors are not doing so based on taking a reasoned position, but rather are being tribalist. It's not so much your example, "if an anti-fascist protest happens and a protestor punches someone", it's more that the "anti-fascist" protest is very likely wrong that the people they are protesting are fascist at all.